Pargo Helps Out the Hornets

The American mission of the 20th century was to export our way of life to the world. Specifically, we wanted the world to embrace free markets. As the world listened to our story, though, the number of competitors American firms faced in the marketplace increased. And although competition is wonderful for consumers, it’s not always so good for individual firms. Competition results in winners and losers, and when you are a loser the game doesn’t seem like so much fun.

For the most part, the major North American sports leagues have been immune to this trend. The world may want free markets, but it doesn’t look like they are as keen on baseball and American football.

Basketball, though, is a different story. Basketball is increasingly popular in Europe and Asia. And as fans in other countries spend more and more money on this sport, basketball teams outside of the United States are increasingly able to offer competitive wages to NBA talents.

The Pargo move is certainly part of a larger trend. But unlike the Childress move, and the proposed emigration of LeBron, Pargo’s move to Russia does not appear to hurt his NBA team. No, it looks like Pargo’s move will make New Orleans a stronger team in the Western Conference.

How does Pargo’s departure help the Hornets? For an answer we turn to Table One.

Table One compares Pargo to an average shooting guard [where I think he played the majority of his minutes in 2007-08]. Relative to an average shooting guard, Pargo does three things well: take field goal attempts, hit his free throws, and get assists. Yes, that’s it. He is below average with respect to shooting efficiency from the field, taking free throws, turnovers, rebounds, steals, blocked shots, and personal fouls. His shooting efficiency from the field is so poor that although he takes 3.2 more field goal attempts per 48 minutes than an average shooting guard, his points scored per 48 minutes is still below average.

If we compare Pargo to an average point guard we still see a player that’s below average with respect to shooting efficiency from the field, rebounds, steals, blocked shots, and personal fouls. He also offers fewer assists than an average point guard.

If we move from the individual stats to Wins Produced, we see that Pargo produced -1.3 wins for the Hornets last year; with a -.043 WP48 [Wins Produced per 48 minutes]. What if the Hornets had been able to replace Pargo with just an average guard? An average NBA player will post a 0.100 WP48, and in Pargo’s 1,497 minutes, would produce 3.1 wins. So moving from Pargo in 2007-08 to an average guard would have increased the Win Produced in New Orleans from 55.1 (the team actually won 56 games) to 59.6. Last year only the Boston Celtics (68.3 Wins Produced), Detroit Pistons (60.4 Wins Produced), and LA Lakers (60.4 Wins Produced) were able to best the 59.6 mark the Hornets would have under the above scenario.

Is it realistic, though, that the Hornets can find an average shooting guard to replace Pargo? It turns out, they already have. James Posey didn’t play much shooting guard for the Celtics last season. But he did log minutes at that position with the Heat in 2006-07, and he was well above average (0.195 WP48 while playing both small forward and shooting guard two years ago). The addition of Posey this summer created some confusion, since it looked like Posey would simply take minutes from the promising Julian Wright. The departure of Pargo, though, allows Posey to play more minutes at shooting guard, and hence give a few more minutes to Wright.

So it looks like Pargo’s departure is clearly good news for the Hornets. Unfortunately, this move will probably not be enough to close the gap between the Hornets and the Lakers (or the Celtics). The Lakers are getting Bynum back, and this addition by subtraction is probably not enough for New Orleans to catch LA in 2008-09 . For New Orleans to vault to the top of the NBA, it’s going to need to add another truly productive player to supplement the amazing talents of Chris Paul and Tyson Chandler. With the departure of Pargo, though, the productive prowess of such a newcomer doesn’t have to be quite that high.

One last comment before I close this post. Whenever I talk about an unproductive scorer we see comments about a player’s ability to hit “key” shots. I think these comments are motivated by the fact that we tend to notice when shots go in. Shots missing do not stand out in our mind, and are rarely commented upon (beyond saying that a player just missed a shot) by announcers or seen in highlight programs. I wonder, though, how the perception of players like Pargo would change if his nearly 400 missed shots in 2007-08 got as much attention as the 254 shots he managed to get in the basket. My sense is that changing the focus of the highlights would change the view of his play. And if that happened, the view of Pargo’s contribution would be more consistent with his actual level of productivity.

40 Responses to "Pargo Helps Out the Hornets"

While Posey – or Julian Wright – replacing Pargo for the 10 minutes he used to play at the shooting guard probably will help the Hornets, there’s still the problem that Pargo was the backup Point Guard too, and his departure only leaves one other ball-handler on the roster: Mike James.

That mean the Hornets will probably have to play Mike James for the 10-12 minutes Paul isn’t on the floor – and if I’m not mistaken, he was worse than Pargo last year.

Ryan,
Its important to remember that Mike James played limited minutes for two different teams last year. When he played more then 1,000 minutes in a season he has always had positive WP48 marks. And three times he was above average.

Pargo has only had one positive year. Every other year was in the negative range and his career average is below zero as well.

I can’t be the only one who remembers how Pargo contributed to the Hornets losing game 7 against the Spurs. He entered chuck mode in the fourth quarter. Admittedly, it seemed like others were reluctant to shoot and he took it upon himself when the ball was swung his way, but it was an ugly, ugly way to go down.

Hey buddy, you forgot to give props to the amazing talents of my boy David West! Dude is a cornerstone on that team. I think a healthy and focused Mike James (focus never a forte of his) could really make this a no-brainer. He can play point but is also more capable of creating for himself and others.

If we look at Pargo’s contributions to New Orleans as a clutch player in a scientific way, we find that he actually was instrumental in his ability to make key shots.

82games.com offers the following analysis, which shows that in the last 5 minutes of games, when neither team is ahead by more than 5 points, his stats go up to: 25 points per 40, shooting 57% from the field, with a positive +/-, and an outstanding assist to turnover ratio.

Looking at the way he performed in the Dallas playoff series further shows just how valuable he was to them.

I don’t think it’s fair to compare Pargo to the “average” shooting guard (he’s actually a combo who plays more minutes at the 1 than the 2), because he was asking for less money than the average SG makes, and New Orleans still needs to replace him with what certainly will be a player who will be far below average, which looking at the players still available on the market, is what they will have to settle for.

The average player in the NBA, by definition, makes the mid-level exception, which is 5.6 million dollars. The Hornets could have got Pargo for half that, if they were willing to give him a 3-year deal. When he decided to take the deal from Dynamo Moscow, he was in fact sifting through contract offers for 1.9 million dollars (the LLE), which is far below what an “average” shooting guard makes in the NBA.

I think the only way this analysis works is if you bring up the other options the Hornets have to replace him with (guys like Flip Murray, Juan Dixon, Fred Jones, etc) and them compare him with them. It’s not all about the stats obviously, you need to consider a player’s character, the team chemistry, the value of keeping the group together, etc. To me, Pargo was New Orleans’ fifth best player last year, and they surely lost a lot by seeing him go.

This analysis also doesn’t consider the excellent defense that Pargo brings off the bench, as we’ve all seen with the intensity and toughness he brings to the floor combined with his ability to put pressure on the ball.

So, after Pargo hurts the Hornets during the first 43 minutes of a game, he then is very good (or at least less sucky) at helping them over the last 5 minutes. Or perhaps he’s streaky. Or perhaps it’s just small sample size. Or perhaps his W48 in the last 5 minutes of a tight game still isn’t very good just better.

The average player here refers to W48 which does not correlate well with salary.

As always the beauty of W48 is in its ability to accurately predict a team’s record based upon it’s personnel (whether they are new to the team or not). So we’ll see.

Maybe you should compare Pargo to the average BACKUP guard rather than all starters and backups. Comparing him to the average guard means that guys like CP3 and Kobe Bryant are part of that average which could skew things. Using the median could also help.

As a Celtics fan, I’d say good luck with James at the 2. Ball handling and defending quicker players are not his strengths, at least not anymore.

Using W48, and considering the free agents still available on the market, I am curious to see you point out 3-4 players who the Hornets are better off signing right now.

Considering that W48 ranks players like Jeff Foster over Tim Duncan, or Erik Dampier and Kurt Thomas over Dirk Nowitzki, or just how low all guards are in general, I am not really sure how accurate a stat it actually is at predicting a team’s record.

“Using W48, and considering the free agents still available on the market, I am curious to see you point out 3-4 players who the Hornets are better off signing right now.”

That’s too much legwork for something that I never mentioned in my post. Regardless, I posted a list of available UFA’s and their W48′s in a Clipper thread somewhere around here. If you’re interested that would be a good place to start.

As for the accuracy of it’s predictions, I don’t have exact numbers. So I too am not sure how accurate a stat that it actually is – although anecdotally I think that it’s pretty good. If my memory serves all the predictions have been right on except for the Bulls recently, and everyone thought that they were going to be better than they turned out to be. Maybe that is an argument against WOW or maybe given its other successes it’s was just a case of Hinrich deciding that he was going to suck and Ben Wallace’s natural age related decline.

Stay tuned, with all of the player movement late last season and this off season, next season is going to be excellent for judging this and any other models that can be evaluated on their ability to predict team records based on players.

Considering that W48 ranks players like Jeff Foster over Tim Duncan, or Erik Dampier and Kurt Thomas over Dirk Nowitzki, or just how low all guards are in general, I am not really sure how accurate a stat it actually is at predicting a team’s record.

What does being surprised by seeing Kurt Thomas ranked over Dirk Nowitzki have to do with how accurately WP predicts team records?

I’m not able to come up with a perfect analogy, but what you’re saying is a little like saying “considering that the Toyota Prius has lots of heavy batteries in it, I’m not sure how good the gas mileage is going to be”. Worrying about the weight is all well and good, but is besides the point when you can just test the mileage directly by putting in some gas and driving around. Then, when you notice that the mileage is actually pretty good, maybe looking back at assumptions about how the weight of the car is actually impacted by the weight of the batteries would make sense…

Any statistical system has to pass the laugh test — it can’t give results that are just on-their-face ridiculous, like “Kurt Thomas is better than Dirk Nowitzki.” A system that says Kurt Thomas is better than Dirk Nowitzki is worse than a system that says the opposite. The system that says Thomas is better than Dirk might nevertheless have some predictive value, but it would certainly have more predictive value if it did not give the clearly wrong answer to the Dirk vs. Thomas “question.”

To get back on topic, I think losing Pargo will hur the Hornets slightly. He’s a below average guard, but he’s certainly an above-average backup, and the Hornets don’t have much of a bench, so they can use every decent backup they’ve got.

Even though Jon’s points were straw men when addressed to my previous posts, it is interesting to come up with some alternatives to Pargo. Here are the guard and guard-forward UFA’s who were unsigned as of July 16th who had positive productivity during the first half of 07-08:

It’s likely that some of these (the SG’s and combo guards in particular) would make better SG’s than Pargo. There are 7 who are around average (where ‘around’ means within 0.025 of average W48) and 2 who are above average. There are 11 others who, while below average, are significantly (> 0.050 W48) more productive than Pargo. This doesn’t include UFA’s signed prior to July 16th nor RFA’s nor players who can been had via trade. So this is likely a significant understatement of the actual number of players whom the Hornet’s can or could’ve reasonably had instead of Pargo.

“Any statistical system has to pass the laugh test — it can’t give results that are just on-their-face ridiculous, like “Kurt Thomas is better than Dirk Nowitzki.” A system that says Kurt Thomas is better than Dirk Nowitzki is worse than a system that says the opposite. The system that says Thomas is better than Dirk might nevertheless have some predictive value, but it would certainly have more predictive value if it did not give the clearly wrong answer to the Dirk vs. Thomas “question.””

Please, kindly provide the system of which you speak for comparison to W48.

“To get back on topic, I think losing Pargo will hur the Hornets slightly. He’s a below average guard, but he’s certainly an above-average backup, and the Hornets don’t have much of a bench, so they can use every decent backup they’ve got.”

I’m not saying the Hornets will be worse next year. Even if losing Pargo hurts them, they could still improve for other reasons.

I didn’t say I had found a system better than W48. There are some that I tend to like a little better, but I’m no expert in this. What I was saying was: if W48 is a good system, that’s *in spite* of flaws like the overvaluing of rebounds and the underrating of Dirk. If the system didn’t have those flaws, it would be better.

I doubt that W48 really says Thomas is better than Dirk, anyway. I’ve clicked around for a minute here and I haven’t found the answer yet.

The WoW system produces a figure called “Wins Produced.” When you average that across minutes, you get WP48. Last year, in 1500 plus minutes, Kurt Thomas produced just over 7 wins; in 2500 plus wins, Tim Duncan produced over 17 wins. Duncan’s WP48 was more than 50% higher than Thomas’s. I.e. the system passes “the laugh test” easily.

And I really don’t buy the assertion that James Posey (a small forward who is often asked to play power forward) is replacing Jannero Pargo (a combo guard who sees fairly substantial minutes at both guard spots). Is there any doubt that the Hornets will need to either:

1) sign another guard/combo guard or
2) significantly up Mike James’ playing time?

Posey just isn’t quick enough to match up with most of the shooting guards he’ll face on a nightly basis in the West. And then on offensively, the Hornets will become pretty stagnant with Chris Paul as the only guy that can create his own shot on the floor.

Jonathan,
Win Score does not adjust for position. When I report this metric, I refer to the position average so the Win Score number has meaning.

Wins Produced adjusts for position played. If you are going to list players across all positions, as you did in your link, then you need to report Wins Produced. If you look, you will see that I have already reported the top players in Wins Produced for this past year.

Pargo gone, Posey in … I’m a bit disappointed with the managements moves coming into the season. HIlton Armstrong will progress, but an addition like the much maligned Ben Gordon would truly take this team to another level. Other top vets on bad teams, Vince Carter or Brad Miller would def, make them true contenders vs. underdogs.

have you ever considered non-statistical defensive factors like shutting an opponent down or denying him the basketball. i believe pargo is very good at that. and pargo is a streaky shooter. he’s of he’s hot but can really fall on a cold spell like you said earlier. btw, you didn’t mention david west. he was an integral part to the hornets success last season.

Even if we do assume that Pargo is a good clutch player, which we aren’t really sure considering his negative clutch +/- from the season before, he hasn’t had a full single season with a positive +/- in his career. In other words, Pargo has always been a below average performer regardless of the performance metric you choose. To be truly effective he’d have to be used in very specific situations, if at all, and the Hornets would be better served without him, all things considered. And using one play-off series performance to justify a player’s value truly goes against the very principle of using empirical evidence, especially when many fans weren’t so happy with the player’s performance in the very next series.

Also it is fairly apparent that you have not spent sufficient time studying on dberri’s method before criticizing it. Just by reading discussions through comments in previous articles in this blog, you’ll see that most of your arguments have been repeated over and over again. I’ve enjoyed reading your articles since the draftcity days, so I’m a bit disappointed to see you coming in so unprepared.

So apparently Dirk (in a down year for him) is still better then Kurt Thomas, although not by much. To top it all off Dirk played about 50% more minutes as well. Jeff Foster however, was more productive per minute than Dirk (Dirk again played more minutes). Apparently, WOW fails the laugh test because it values a good Center over a good Power Forward in some particular year.

I fail. The claim was that WOW is laughable because it values Jeff Foster over Tim Duncan (which of course it doesn’t) not Jeff Foster over Dirk. This and the fact that I typed ‘then’ instead of ‘than’ requires that I commit seppoku to regain my honor.

The problem is that WoW doesn’t exactly offer predictions. The articles boil down to: “The 76ers will be good.” That’s not a very detailed prediction. My mother could tell you that. What will their record be if players x and y play z minutes? Give us scenarios.

As for the person who asked why big men dominate the WP48, it’s because rebounds are weighted heavily in the model. I’m surprised Kidd doesn’t have the highest wins of any guard: he has high assists and rebounds. I guess the 42% shooting is a sticking point. Too bad Oscar isn’t around anymore. He’d have a WP48 of .6 or something ridiculous with his triple double average + 50% shooting.

But hey, how about those Nuggets? Since Marcus Camby is more or less the same as Tim Duncan (theoretically, you see) and he produced, what was it, 18 wins or something then the Nuggets should immediately nose dive into the lottery with no chance of even sniffing the playoffs without him, right? I want to see a prediction on Denver’s record this upcoming season. Not “they’ll be worse.” Well, I’m sure they will be. But 18 wins or whatever it is worse is a prediction I want to see, with some fudge factor assuming Melo and whoever will get some percentage of the now available rebounds is fair, but you see what I’m getting at.

You can test Wins Produced by adding the results for all the players and comparing what you get to the team’s win-loss record for the season. If the correlation is high, that’s an excellent indicator for the metric, and it *is* high.

Of course you can predict a team’s record for the coming year by looking at its current roster’s wp48, making an estimate of how many minutes each player will play, and then adding up the data. If your assumptions about minutes are correct, it’s likely that the prediction will be reasonably accurate — NBA players seem not to change as much in productivity from year to year as in some other pro sports.

But… it is impossible to predict how many minutes a guy will play! With Camby gone, do *you* know how many more minutes any Nugget will play? If not, how can you measure what his absence will mean?